Tommy Robinson: EDL founder released from jail
13 September 2019, 12:33
Tommy Robinson has been released from jail two months after receiving a nine month sentence for contempt of court.
Tommy Robinson has been released from jail two months after being given a nine-month sentence for contempt of court.
The English Defence League (EDL) founder emerged with a beard and uncut hair as he spoke to supporters and the media outside Belmarsh prison in south-east London on Friday morning.
He denied he had been attacked in prison, and said he was kept in solitary confinement.
Robinson said: "I have walked into Belmarsh prison and walked back out without seeing another prisoner.
"They would have (killed me)."
He said he had been sent 14 sacks of mail from supporters while in prison.
Robinson was jailed in July for live-streaming on Facebook a video which featured defendants in a sexual exploitation trial and put the case at risk of collapse.
The court concluded that he was in contempt by breaching the reporting restriction imposed on the trial, by live-streaming the video from outside the public entrance to the court to 250, 000 viewers, and by "aggressively confronting and filming" some of the defendants.
In her sentencing remarks, Dame Victoria Sharp told Robinson that "nothing less than a custodial penalty would properly reflect the gravity of the conduct we have identified".
She also said he had "lied about a number of matters" and that he had wrongly "sought to portray himself as the victim of unfairness and oppression".
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was given a nine month sentence, but was told he would only spend 10 weeks in prison.
He previously spent 19 weeks in prison for the same offence.
